


Remedial Recovery

by biggod



Series: Lessons In Adjustment [2]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Chronic Illness, Disability, Established Relationship, Gardening, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Married Couple, Medical Conditions, Morning Sex, Near Death Experiences, Post-Canon, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:33:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26959624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggod/pseuds/biggod
Summary: A series of moments detailing how we hurt, how we heal, how we find happiness again.Sequel to Lessons in Adjustment.
Relationships: Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir
Series: Lessons In Adjustment [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1967347
Comments: 14
Kudos: 104





	Remedial Recovery

**Author's Note:**

> this will make more sense if you read part one first.
> 
> mind the tags. stay safe. i love you all.
> 
> for maya and midge, who have hurt and healed along with me, and for the anon who told me to get some therapy :)
> 
> thanks to jude for the beta!!!

Troy sits in the car, drumming a solo on the steering wheel. There’s no music playing. He’s too nervous for it today, his heart thumping out a different, more erratic beat. He’s parked in front of a red brick building; he glances at the pale yellow door every few seconds.

Eventually that door opens, and Abed walks out, fingers tapping on the messenger bag that’s slung across his body. He doesn’t look upset. Seeing him from a distance illustrates much more clearly to Troy the way his shirts hang off of him a little more these days, how bony his shoulders are beneath his hoodie.

It’s gotten better in the last couple of months, but Abed has a hard time putting on weight, so it’s slow going. During his last checkup, the doctor had stared at the scale and clicked her tongue disapprovingly, and Troy can’t get the sound out of his mind.

Abed climbs into the passenger seat, setting his bag on the floor between his feet. He then turns to smile reassuringly at Troy.

“How’d it go?”

“It went well. She said the first few sessions will be spent getting familiar with major events and relationships before we dive into anything emotional.”

“So no first-session epiphanies.”

“No. Unsurprisingly, the tropes proved unrealistic.”

“Okay.” Troy looks forward and exhales a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “So you’re good?”

“I’m good.” Abed pauses next to him. “You know, she did mention she was happy to see you too, if you want.”

“Maybe,” Troy says, noncommittally, and starts the engine.

\---

Abed can’t drive for six months post-seizure. It’s the middle of January, nearly five months since August 23rd - the night Troy doesn’t let himself think about - and the idea of Abed driving on his own again in five weeks makes something in Troy’s stomach flip.

Really, the idea of Abed doing anything on his own does.

Abed highly values his autonomy. He enjoys company, not supervision. He wants to be able to do what he wants on his own; he prefers to invite others to take part in his life, and hates it when they decide it for him. Troy knows this, and he’s afraid of driving Abed away, but there’s a panic that overtakes him slowly when Abed is out of sight for too long, when he’s anywhere that Troy can’t reach within a minute or two.

It hasn’t been much of an issue yet. Abed isn’t working much, and only from home when he does so; Troy hasn’t danced in longer than he can remember, so they stay at home most days. It will change, they both know it, but for now they’re hibernating in the safety of their bubble.

Still, every once in a while Abed will go for a run, and Troy’s foot won’t stop tapping until he’s back in sight, or he’ll be taken to the back during checkups for a CT scan or an ultrasound and Troy will dig his nails into his palm and hum Daybreak until his brain stops making a car crash sound.

When Britta brought up therapy to Abed at Christmas, they agreed it was a good idea. Abed has been struggling to adjust to the changes, and sometimes Troy wakes up to find that Abed is holding him so tightly that Troy’s body hurts. Once, Abed’s shoulder was out of place, and instead of resetting it, Troy found him running his fingers over the scar on his back, typically unreachable.

When Abed told him shortly after the new year that he wanted to see a therapist, Troy supported it wholeheartedly, though with some surprise - Abed’s willingness to see any kind of doctor is a clear sign that something is wrong enough that he can’t ignore it. When Abed gently implied that Troy should consider going too, Troy’s brain slammed the brakes.

Therapists are supposed to help you deal with bad things. Bad things didn’t happen to Troy, they happened to Abed, so Abed needs therapy, not Troy. This is the train of thought Troy clings to as he waits outside the office twice a week for fifty-five minute sessions.

_You can go home and come back,_ Abed tells him.

_Yeah, I’ll probably do that,_ Troy replies. He never leaves the parking spot.

Therapists make you deal with things you don’t want to think about. Troy can’t stand to be so close to one, but he can’t stand to be so far away from Abed, either.

\---

It’s the first week of February when Abed exits the office precisely six minutes before the end of his session and walks to the car, but doesn’t get inside. He motions for Troy to roll the window down.

“You okay?” Troy asks immediately.

“She wants to meet you,” Abed says.

Troy’s mouth goes dry.

“Uhh,” he says.

“It’s not couples therapy, Troy. She just wants to say hi.”

“Okay,” he says, hesitantly shutting off the car and opening his door. He forgets to roll up the window. He realizes this halfway down the sidewalk and wants to use it as a reason to turn back, but Abed takes his hand and squeezes, so Troy swallows around the lump in his throat and presses on.

Sophie is a pretty, dark-haired woman with glasses and a friendly face. She is short, nearly comically next to Abed, and has the slightest of lisps, and that makes him want to trust her more than most of the magazine-perfect people he’s met in Los Angeles. Still, his hand feels unsteady when he reaches out to shake hers.

“Hi, welcome,” she says, sounding like she means it. “I’m Sophie.”

“Troy,” he says, and manages to sound alright.

“Thank you for coming in, Troy.” She smiles. “I like to put a face to the name, when I can.”

“That makes sense.” _Be normal, Barnes, be normal._ “So, you know Britta?”

Her eyes light up.

“Yes! We met online, actually, in a therapy resource group. I finally got to meet her in person a couple of years ago. She’s wonderful. Abed tells me you’re very close.”

“She’s family,” Troy says, eyes darting around the waiting room every few seconds against his will.

“I’m glad you both have a support system,” she says, and it isn’t unkind but Troy feels cold anyway, as though she’s seen through some facade he doesn’t even remember putting up. He hears emphasis on _both_ that he’s sure she didn’t inflect.

“Yeah,” he laughs awkwardly, and he’s sure it sounds weird but can’t figure out exactly how. He wonders if this is how Abed feels navigating body language and intent outside their home.

She looks at Abed. It’s a normal look. Troy feels like they’re communicating about him anyway, like they have a telepathic therapist-client bond specifically for talking about all the ways Troy isn’t being a good husband, how he’s probably losing his fucking mind--

“I’ll see you on Tuesday?” Sophie is asking Abed, and of course that’s why she was looking at him, to ask him a normal question like a normal human.

“Sure.”

“It was lovely to meet you, Troy,” she says sincerely. “If you need anything, give me a call.”

“Bye, Sophie,” Abed says. She waves at him; he waves back.

“Nice to meet you,” Troy adds, a second too late. She smiles and returns to her office.

“Are you alright?” Abed asks, turning Troy to face him. His hand is still wrapped around Troy’s, grounding him.

“Yeah, I’m cool,” Troy says weakly, and tries to play it off with a laugh.

“Okay,” Abed says, and tugs at his hand gently. Then Troy is exiting the pale yellow door in the red brick building too.

\---

The last week of February, Abed is approved to drive again.

“Are you sure?” Troy blurts out, as the doctor is signing the paperwork. He pauses, pen poised above the page. Abed freezes too, looks at Troy with wide eyes.

“I just,” he starts, and then he can’t seem to stop, his thoughts channeling directly from his brain to his mouth, “What if he has another seizure, or a blackout behind the wheel? Is six months long enough to be able to tell? Are there gonna be more checkups, or are we on our own? How do we know the medication changes down the road won’t affect this? What if he gets in an accident, and I’m not there, or he needs surgery again, or he _dies_ because we thought everything was fine when it obviously wasn’t, just like we did a year ago--”

“Troy.”

Abed’s voice is sharp, to get his attention, but his eyes are hurt, not angry. Troy feels like he can’t breathe all of a sudden.

“Sorry,” he says hoarsely. “I’m, uh. I’m gonna go wait outside.”

Troy drives home. They sit in the driveway in silence for a moment before Troy speaks.

“I think I need to go to therapy,” he says.

\---

Troy’s leg is bouncing, his sneaker making a soft, echoey _tap tap tap_ on the tile. He’s wearing one of Abed’s sweaters today, sleeves stretched down into his fists, where he runs his fingertips over the soft fabric in soothing patterns. He’s watching his shoelace bounce up and down like it’s a sideways pendulum.

“Troy,” he hears, and looks up to see Sophie smiling politely. “Are you ready?”

He nods and stands, following her into her office. She shuts the door softly behind him.

“Please, have a seat wherever’s comfortable,” she says, sitting in a plush armchair with her notepad beside it. There’s a couch and another armchair; he chooses the chair, next to the window, where he can see the car outside if he parts the blinds just so. She smiles like he’s said something funny.

“So, I usually spend the first session or two getting a feel for your history and the relationships that are most important to you,” she says.

“Is that still necessary?” he asks. His leg is bouncing again already. “Me and Abed’s venn diagram of contacts is basically a circle.”

She laughs.

“It may go a little faster than usual, but I’d like to hear about the things and people in your life from your perspective.”

“Okay.” He clears his throat. “Where do you want to start?”

“Tell me about the people you’d consider closest to you. Your family.”

Troy leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His leg stills. He studies the pattern on the carpet.

“Well. There’s… Abed, of course.”

“Tell me about him.”

“For real?” He looks up at her.

“Just because I know him doesn’t mean I know what he means to you.”

“Everything,” Troy says, and then he can’t look at her soft smile anymore, so he returns his gaze to the carpet. “He’s my best friend. I’d do anything to keep him safe. I love him.”

“Can you describe him in your own words?”

Troy hesitates.

“He’s _so_ smart. It feels like he knows everything sometimes. He usually knows people better than they know themselves, but they don’t understand him at all. He has to fight to be understood, but he gives people the tools to do it if they’d just pay attention. He’s creative, and funny, and he gets me like nobody else--”

He stops abruptly. She waits for a moment to be sure he isn’t going to add anything else.

“Who else?”

“Annie,” he says immediately. “She’s the Luke.”

“The Luke?”

“The third part of our trio. The third Stooge, the Tercera Caballero, the Luke to our Han and Leia. She’s a part of us. The whole study group is a family, but Annie is… I don’t know. Ours. One third of Casa de Trobedison.”

Sophie takes a note in her black leather-bound notebook. Her pen is gold. Troy doesn’t know why he’s focusing so much on the details.

“And what’s she like?”

“She’s ambitious. She wants to be the best at everything, so she works really hard at being a good friend. We helped each other grow up, I think. She’s really sweet and she helps us both be more considerate. Abed and I can get lost in our own little world sometimes.”

She makes another note. It almost looks like she’s drawing. Troy squints and makes a mental note of it.

“Then there’s Britta. She’s- well, technically she’s my ex, but we’re closer now than we ever were then. She kinda helped me realize a lot of stuff about myself, back in the day.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Like being gay.” Troy scratches the back of his neck and laughs a bit. “She’s the best.”

Another squiggle. Troy’s starting to wonder if she’s taking written notes at all.

“Then, uh. Shirley. She’s both a mom and a friend.”

“Are you not friends with a lot of moms?”

“Not really. But it’s also that she feels like both a parent and an equal, I don’t know how to say it… She’s really maternal, but she’ll fuck you up.”

Sophie laughs again, and Troy truly doesn’t know what to think of her.

“And we owe her a lot,” he adds, a little quieter. “For a lot of things, but I guess she, um. She really came through for us lately.”

Sophie nods. Troy has a feeling she already knows what he’s talking about, but it’s almost nice to be able to mention these things without having to explain the greater context. It takes the pressure off a bit.

“And then Jeff, he’s kind of, I don’t know, the glue. He’s the guy you trust to pull you out of your darkest moments, but not to check your mail while you’re out of town. He’s a good friend.”

“Parents? Siblings?”

“No siblings.” Troy pulls the sleeves of Abed’s sweater back from where they’ve slipped to cover his knuckles again. “My dad didn’t want much to do with me after we got married. I’m not close to my mom, but we talk.”

She looks sad at this. Troy thought therapists were supposed to be impartial, so it surprises him.

“Abed’s dad is nice. He’s also got a younger brother, but they’ve never met, because his mom is--”

Troy catches himself, flexes his fingers.

“They’ve never met before. There are other friends, from Greendale, a few here from Abed’s work and my dance studio, but those are the people we’re really close to.”

“Oh, what kind of dance do you do?” she asks, brightening.

“I do it for fun, so I like to try as many classes as I can,” he answers, more comfortable for a moment than he’s been since he got in the car to come here. “I like modern and jazz a lot. I just started a floor class, too, and I was really liking it, but I haven’t gone since-- in a while. I’ll probably be rusty when I get back.”

She doesn’t mention the stumble. He’s grateful. She adds another squiggle to her page.

“Are you excited to go back?” she asks instead.

“Yeah. Eventually.”

She hums, and scribbles again.

“Okay. Why don’t you tell me about yourself? Anything that seems important or that you want to share.”

“You don’t lead with that?”

“People get nervous if they think they’re being interrogated about themselves right off the bat. Besides, in novels, you see the character list before the prologue.” She reaches towards her side table and opens the drawer. Troy is starting to understand why Abed trusts her. “It helps a lot of people explain themselves better when they don’t have to stop and give me context for who they’ve been around.”

Troy nods, unable to argue with her point. Sophie withdraws a clear plastic pencil case filled with colored fine point pens from the drawer. She pops it open, sets it on the tabletop, and leans back in her chair again.

“Uhh. Okay.” Troy scratches his ear. “From the beginning, I guess?”

“Wherever you’d like to start.” She uncaps an orange pen and holds it ready.

“I grew up Jehovah’s Witness. My parents divorced when I was in high school. I was a quarterback and the prom king.” He laughs a little uneasily.

“You don’t seem thrilled.”

“I was just a really different person back then. I didn’t like who I was, and it feels weird to look back on it.”

She nods, and writes, switching to pink when she’s done.

“I blew off my football scholarship and ended up going to community college. That’s where I met Abed and the study group. Oh!” Troy sits up. “Pierce was there, too.”

“Tell me about Pierce.”

“He was part of the study group. I don’t know why we let him get away with so much, he was racist as shit. We were all kind of messed up at the beginning, but Pierce just got worse.”

Troy shakes his head. He’s surprised at how long it’s been since he really thought about Pierce. Sophie changes colors again.

“Anyway. He was rich. I lived with him for a while before I moved in with Abed. When he died he left me a bunch of money if I would sail around the world without my friends and become a man, or whatever.”

Sophie raises an eyebrow.

“That’s quite an adventure. Did you go?”

“I did. I was gone for a little under two years. When I came back, Abed had moved to LA, so I came straight here to join him.”

“Two years. You were on a boat sailing the world alone for two years.”

“Nah, LeVar Burton was there.”

She looks at him dubiously.

“I don’t know, Pierce had money. LeVar never really told me why he decided to go. Maybe he wanted an adventure too.”

“And was it? An adventure?”

“Yeah, I guess it was. We got kidnapped by pirates.”

“Okay, wait,” she says, amused. “There are actual pirates in a story featuring LeVar Burton, and you _guess_ it was an adventure?”

“Abed wasn’t there,” Troy shrugs.

“Okay. So you were gone for two years.”

She draws some kind of large loop, as far as Troy can tell, in green. He still isn’t quite sure what to make of her doodling during their session, but he hopes it looks cool at least. Maybe it’ll be one of those images that she holds up at the end and asks if he sees a man or a butterfly.

“Yeah. The world is cool and all, but I was really glad when it was done. I came back here, moved in with Abed, we worked some stuff out.”

He realizes he’s fiddling with his wedding band, twisting it around his finger the way he does when he’s anxious. He flexes his fingers and curls them into fists to keep them still.

“Uh. We got married a couple of years after that. It’s been good since then. He makes good movies. I dance and do a little with Pierce’s company when I feel like it, and sometimes I work on A/C units.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“I’m the air conditioning Messiah. It’s a whole thing.” He waves his hand. “Point is, we’re lucky enough to be able to do what we want, and help the people we care about, without sweating anything too much. Things were good.”

“Were?” It’s phrased like a question, but inflected like a statement.

“Yeah, I mean.” Troy’s turning his ring around his finger again. He doesn’t stop himself this time. “You already know about all that.”

“I won’t make you talk about anything, Troy. Today is about what you want me to know about you.”

“Okay then.” He looks her in the eye, maybe for the first time. “I don’t get therapy. Like, I know it helps some people, but I don’t get the point of digging into the shit that hurts you the worst to think about.”

He isn’t aggressive, he’s earnest and quiet and he thinks he’s asking her to help him understand.

“I cry when I need to, I yell when I need to, I apologize when I’ve fucked something up. Not much has happened to me like it has to Abed, so I don’t get why I need this, but a part of me thinks I do. I kind of lost it at the checkup the other day, and I don’t want to do that again.”

His hands still, and he stares at them for a moment. Then he slowly folds them together.

“I’m not dealing well. I’m so scared all the time. I don’t know that this is what’s going to fix that, but I need to try for Abed.”

Once again, she gives him a moment to be sure he’s finished.

“Therapy can mean a lot of things to different people,” she says. He’s relieved to hear she doesn’t sound upset with him. “To some of my clients, it’s a venting session. They come in every week to have a place where they can safely relieve tensions about their boss, or their kid’s rude soccer coach.”

“You get that one a lot?” Troy interjects curiously.

“You have no idea. I see the parents of the entire Pasadena High School soccer team.”

She makes a face and caps her pen, closing her notebook to lean onto her knees.

“To other people, they pretty much understand their issues but need reassurance that they’re working on the right things, in the right ways. I’m more of a sounding board for those clients, helping them towards the goals they set for themselves.”

Troy nods. That doesn’t sound so bad.

“There are a few clients that come to me,” she says, a touch more delicately, “That have trauma to sort out, and don’t know where to begin. Some of them know it, some of them don’t. I’m not here to force you to talk about anything you don’t want to discuss. Ever.”

“Ever?” Troy is surprised by this.

“Ever. You only ever tell me what you want to. My job is to help you figure out the best and healthiest way to deal with whatever problems you bring to me. If that means talking about pirates and LeVar Burton, or talking about the traffic you hit on the way here, I’m here for that. If it means we discuss you having a difficult time at a checkup, we’ll only delve as deeply as you want to.”

Troy takes a deep breath and sighs it out audibly.

“Why did you smile like that when I sat down?” he asks, testing the waters.

“Abed sits in that same spot,” she says, giving him the same smile as before. “He made a beeline for it during his first session too. I think it’s cute.”

“Oh. Okay. Can I see what you’re drawing?”

It’s kind of a test, but mostly Troy just wants to see if she’s any good at doodling.

“Sure!”

She brightens, which he doesn’t expect. He thought she’d be embarrassed, but instead she opens her notebook and turns it to face him.

The two page spread is covered in a map of his life. Events are color-coded - time at Greendale, time at sea, time in LA - and characters are lined up on the side like the key on a map. Colorful arrows point people to events, and events to chronological order, in a dizzying but oddly sensible system.

“Wow,” he says, stunned. “I… did not expect that.”

“I’m a visual person,” she replies.

“Okay,” he says, and gives a tentative smile. “I think I can do this.”

\---

Abed is waiting in the car when he comes out, feet up on the dash, putty squishing between his hands. He looks up when Troy slides into the driver’s seat, eyes trained ahead, and watches Troy get situated with a perceptive stare.

“It didn’t go badly,” he guesses. Troy lets go of his breath.

“No,” he says, buckling his seatbelt. “It didn’t go badly.”

Abed reaches out and gently touches Troy’s wrist, silently asking for Troy to look at him. Troy swallows and obliges, facing him finally, heart flipping as usual at the sight of Abed’s wide gaze. He takes Abed’s hand and squeezes lightly.

“You’re going to go back?”

“I’m going to go back.” He’s quiet, but tries for reassuring. His voice only wobbles a little.

“I’m glad.” Abed’s voice is soft. He looks at their hands, runs his thumb across Troy’s knuckle.

“I’m trying,” Troy says, strained.

“I know.” Abed gives him a little half-smile, but doesn’t meet his eyes again. “Me too.”

Troy lifts their hands, presses a kiss to Abed’s ring finger, and starts the car.

\---

_The last two days after Abed’s diagnosis have passed in a haze of tears and disbelief for Troy, and he can’t seem to sit still for too long. He alternates between obsessively reading articles on lupus, kidney disease, radical nephrectomies -_ “the total removal of a kidney, the surrounding fat and adrenal gland” _\- and staring at absolutely nothing while the words_ life expectancy _and_ surgical complication rates _hover in the air before his eyes._

_Troy wakes with a start at three o’clock, the third night after diagnosis. Abed is warm beside him, his hand sprawled lightly across Troy’s abdomen. He doesn’t wake, even when Troy lifts his arm away and slips out of bed; he’s still adjusting to the very new and aggressive medications they’ve put him on, and he’s sleeping longer and heavier than usual._

_Troy’s socked feet make no noise as he pads down the hallway in the dark of their home. He stops outside the Dreamatorium door, takes a deep breath, and swings it open, wincing at the telltale squeal of the door hinge. He glances back down the hall at the bedroom, but Abed does not appear, so Troy steps inside and closes himself in._

_He doesn’t turn on the light. Standing in the absolute still and quiet, he’s almost afraid to breathe, to disrupt the peaceful slumber of the room. It feels silly, but the room has always seemed alive to Troy, like a moving, shifting energy possesses it. It was present back in Greendale, in the shoddy apartment Abed had when Troy first joined him in Los Angeles - a one-bedroom, lived in like a studio so the Dreamatorium could survive - and now in their own home, the yellow grid like veins spreading its powerful pulse to every corner._

_Now, he stands silent in the dark room, the only illumination a sliver of moonlight peeking around the edge of the blackout blind. He breathes in as quietly as possible, but he can still hear the slight tremble of the air. He closes his eyes, stretches his fingers, exhales, and opens his eyes again._

_“Render Dreamatorium,” he says shakily. “Simulate potential outcomes.”_

_The room shifts. Fluorescents flicker to life overhead, bringing with them a buzz that makes Troy’s skin itch; with their light comes a cramped waiting room, walls a sickly mint green, with no windows and a pair of dinged brown double-doors marked EMERGENCY PERSONNEL ONLY. Troy doesn’t remember where he came in from. There’s a woman with dull dirty-blonde hair sitting behind a large desk, weary eyes glued to a too-bright computer screen, her chin propped on the heel of her palm while she clicks endlessly. Troy sits in a hard plastic chair, the edge of the armrest digging into his ribs. An impossibly old man sits three seats to the left, coughing wetly every few seconds, and to the right is a mother reading a magazine and a small boy of maybe four._

_Troy’s foot is tapping, and there’s a screeching in his head like someone’s playing a discordant chord on a grand piano while someone rips the wires out of its belly. The little boy jumps over his armrest and crouches in the seat next to Troy’s, staring intensely at him._

_“Can I help you?” he asks. His voice sounds like it’s coming over the shoddy speakers in the tile ceiling instead of from his mouth. It’s a weird question to ask a child, he thinks. How do you talk to children?_

_Troy doesn’t know. He doesn’t have any._

_The boy stares at him, unresponsive, his eyes huge. He’s got freckles and an upturned nose. He looks nothing like Abed._

_Troy’s attention is torn away when the ugly double-doors creak open and a gruff, angular doctor calls out, “Nadir-Barnes,” in her pack-a-day smoker growl, turning and shuffling away without waiting for an answer. Troy leaps up to follow, catching the door just before it closes._

_“Is there news?” Troy asks urgently, somehow struggling to keep up with her ambling gait. “Is he out of surgery?”_

_“Surgery didn’t take,” she says, managing to sound regretful and apathetic at the same time, stopping in front of a closed wooden door. “We did everything we could. I’m sorry for your loss.”_

_She opens the door, and Troy looks inside._

_“Next simulation,” he gasps into the pitch dark._

_There’s a creak and a click, and a spotlight flickers to life beside Troy, irised in tightly to illuminate a sharp circle across the room. Abed sits in a leather wingback armchair that they don’t own, one leg crossed over the other, hands crossed in his lap. He wears all black, a turtleneck, beret. He’s staring, unblinking, at a bright red rotary telephone on an otherwise bare side table. There’s an ugly green patterned wallpaper on the wall behind him that Troy doesn’t recognize; a large white clock ticks loudly upon it, its massive hands snapping the seconds by viciously. There is a large sign above the clock, right at the edge of the scene, that proclaims in bold black letters, ON THE WAITING LIST. It feels like looking at a cartoon dream sequence, the utter blackness framing the scene, the vaudevillian aura of sardonic moroseness. The spotlight hums._

_Abed waits, ever calm. The telephone doesn’t ring. Troy watches as Abed’s eyes grow sunken, his skin becomes paper-thin and jaundiced, his bones begin to show prominently under the fabric of his sweater. He slumps, slowly, so slowly, in his chair. The bright red begins to bleed from the telephone, pooling on the table, dripping onto the obscured floor, leaving the plastic an unsettling, stained bone-white._

_The spotlight’s hum has become loud and tinny like a screaming kettle. The phone doesn’t ring._

_“Next simulation,” he whispers, and Abed’s eyes flick to him for the first time just before the light goes out._

_Troy doesn’t realize his eyes are closed until he opens them, and Apartment 303 appears before him. He stands in the center of it, eyes wide; their friends are around, he’s vaguely aware, but their faces and figures are blurry. Transplant paperwork sits on the kitchen counter, unsigned._

_“If I’m going to die, it will be on my terms, and fully as myself,” Abed says. His voice sounds distant. He’s standing in front of Troy with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. Someone uncomfortably unfamiliar waits for him by the apartment door._

_Abed looks at him sadly, leans in to murmur in his ear._

_“I’m sorry that I can’t accept it. Not even for you.”_

_He steps back, offers Troy a handshake. The double touch of Troy’s hand to his own chest knocks something loose inside, and he feels it rattling brokenly as he breathes. Abed’s skin burns unpleasantly to the touch._

_Abed steadies his bag on his shoulder, takes one final look at the room, and steps through the door. It closes behind him with an echoing thud._

_“Troy?” He can’t move, or won’t. He thinks it’s one of the girls who speaks. “What did he say to you?”_

_When Troy breathes in, it feels like there’s something wounded in him, something raw and festering beneath his ribs. He opens his mouth to respond._

_“End simulation,” he says instead._

_The image fades quickly. The feeling does not. He stands in the dark, tears pricking at his eyes, listening to his own ragged exhales and digging his nails into his palm._

_The Dreamatorium is a powerful tool, but it’s run on the imagination of the user. Troy knows, deeply, that its surrealism is easily misunderstood, and that solo simulations are dangerous; any outcomes are a direct product of the simulator’s psyche and run the risk of showing skewed results. Troy understands on some logical level that these outcomes are a symptom of his own anxieties and not the likeliest of scenarios._

_He releases his clenched fist and slips out of the room, closing the door firmly, hand tightening around the knob for a brief moment. Knowing that doesn’t make him feel any better._

_Troy slides back into bed and reaches out for Abed. He mumbles something incomprehensible and pulls Troy closer, limbs heavy with sleep, and slips right back under nearly instantly. Troy breathes in deeply and decides that he’s done letting his private fears get the better of him. He has to be. If he can’t stand to look into the future, then one day at a time it will be._

_Troy keeps the Dreamatorium firmly shut for months._

\---

Troy starts going twice a week for fifty-five minute sessions.

What he finds is that Sophie is encouraging, playful, and very smart. She knows how to make people comfortable and relate to them in ways they’ll understand. She never asks more of him than he wants to give, but she does ask him to examine what he offers closely. He can see the good it’s doing Abed. He thinks maybe it’s started to help him too.

The difference between Troy and Abed has been in their recovery. Abed struggled badly after the transplant, sinking into depression and fighting for his identity for months after the surgery. He didn’t eat enough, much to the chagrin of his doctor; he was more easily agitated, more sensitive to his environment. Once, early on, he woke in a panic and started clawing at his back, screaming _get it out_ until Troy got him to breathe; Abed had collapsed in Troy’s arms, and Troy soothed him until he stopped shaking.

Abed started seeing improvement in the winter, sleeping a little more soundly in November, breathing a little more deeply in December. He still has bad days. They’re slowly becoming the outlier.

Troy, on the other hand, experienced a short-term post-transplant relief that turned gradually to a consuming fear of future unknowns. He turned from the militant positivity that got him through the pre-surgery days to a man whose own bones feel too heavy to carry. He’s anxious, now, afraid of upsetting the delicate peace they’ve found. He feels like their whole world is fragile, breakable, like a snow globe held in a clumsy child’s hand. He’s afraid to tip the balance and send them crashing to the floor.

He wants to laugh, to make his husband laugh. He wants them both to feel safe and happy again. He has no idea how to make that happen.

Sophie is helping Abed, he can tell. Troy feels guilty that he hasn’t been able to do the same.

\---

“Annie called me today,” Abed says one evening, over dinner. “She wants us to help her pick a house.”

Annie is in the last stages of transferring her life to Los Angeles. It’s been the plan for years, but last year’s events spurred her into action. She’s got an apartment about fifteen minutes away, and her short-term lease is up in a couple of months.

“Cool,” Troy says, and he means it, but his heart isn’t in it.

Today was the first day Abed went to the studio in months. Troy was on edge for hours.

After a moment, he realizes Abed hasn’t elaborated. He looks up to find Abed studying him carefully.

“You said that exactly the same way when the study group brought up coming here for Christmas. And when Britta mentioned that you have time to go back to dance again.”

“Okay,” Troy says, and swallows. “I say ‘cool’ sometimes.”

“No, I mean _exactly_ the same way. Like you don’t think it’s going to happen.” Abed’s forehead furrows like he’s trying to puzzle something out. “Are you afraid to make plans?”

“I mean- it’s in the future, Abed. Sure, we can plan for it, I guess--”

“Troy,” Abed says evenly, and Troy _knows_ Abed isn’t attacking him, is only trying to understand, but his heart is pounding in his throat and he feels cornered anyway, “Do you still feel like we’re living in a state of emergency?”

Abed’s eyes are trained on him - his _massive fucking doe eyes_ , impossibly full of sincerity and concern - and Troy loves those eyes but he cannot take what feels, in the moment, like their scrutiny.

He leaves the kitchen. Abed sighs behind him as he goes.

\---

_He’s in the dark driver’s seat, staring blankly at the road ahead, hands gripping the steering wheel so tight he thinks his knuckles will break through his skin. His hands hurt. He doesn’t let go._

_“Troy-- Troy! I don’t think he’s breathing!” Annie’s frantic voice sounds from the backseat._

_They’re at a stop sign. Troy slams the car into park._

_“Switch,” he says, and Annie is leaping out of the car to take his place while he’s climbing into the back to sit on the cramped floor. He’s stroking through Abed’s hair, clutching his hand, murmuring softly to him. Annie slams the driver door shut and floors it without touching her seatbelt._

_There is a moment when Troy looks at Abed and the light from the street makes the shadows seem longer, and Troy swears he remembers looking down at Abed in a dark room, feeling this same dread, like he’s watching Abed die. His chest is horrifically still, and his fever has been replaced with the starkest chill Troy has ever felt, worse than the Colorado winters and Arctic winds. It hits Troy in a gut-wrenching jolt that he isn’t positive Abed hasn’t died already._

_They’re pulling into the emergency room bay. Someone wrenches open the door and tears Abed from Troy’s arms, and they’re screaming but so is he, and he can’t remember the words he says but he doesn’t think he wants to know them anyway._

_His hands are empty. They put Abed on a stretcher. A part of Troy that won’t shut up tells him they’re taking him straight down to the morgue._

_Troy leaps out of the car before he knows what’s happening; he follows the stretcher until a receptionist calls out:_

_“Sir, you can’t go back there!”_

_He claps his hand over his mouth and clutches at his own ribs, trying to hold his panic inside as they take Abed where he can’t see. It spills out of him everywhere it can, from his eyes, shaking in his unsteady knees, sharp in his nails digging into his side. Annie appears from nowhere, wrapping her arms around him. He doesn’t remember much of what happens from that point until Abed wakes up screaming, but he wishes he didn’t remember that, either._

\---

Abed is lying on the living room floor when Troy walks in. Troy can see his Lego socks poking out from behind the coffee table.

Troy skids into the room, expecting - though not prepared for - the worst. Instead, Abed is lying flat on his back with his hands folded neatly on his chest, watching the ceiling fan spin with a dull concentration. His toe wiggles for a moment. He doesn’t acknowledge Troy’s obvious moment of panic.

Troy hesitates. Abed looks forlorn, lost.

“Abed?” he asks tentatively. Abed raises a hand and grips the side of the coffee table, pushing it away from his body as far as his long arm can reach, and then twines his fingers back together without a word.

Troy kicks his slippers off by the door and lies down next to Abed, only scanning his features up close for a quick moment before deciding he doesn’t look dazed or injured and turning his own attention to the ceiling. He mimics Abed’s position, but crosses one foot over the other.

They don’t move for a while, long enough that Troy’s back starts to ache and his head grows uncomfortable in every position. He wonders how Abed is doing it, dealing with the pain he must be putting himself in without a hint of a wince, but the consistent motion of the fan does turn out to be calming, nearly hypnotic. He lets himself drift with it for a while, discomfort the only thing keeping him from dozing off.

Troy feels rather than sees it when Abed decides to speak.

“I don’t feel like a person today,” he says quietly, hoarsely.

“Okay,” Troy says slowly. “What do you feel like?”

Abed considers this for a long moment, his eyes flicking to the corners of the crown molding.

“Like I’ve been robbed, maybe,” he finally says. “Kind of like both of us have.”

Dread tightens like a vice around Troy’s heart. He pauses.

“How so?” he asks, unsteady.

“Some days I feel like I can figure it out,” Abed says instead. “I wake up and it’s like I’m in an old place but with new eyes, and I have a map or a guide or a flashlight and I can find my way around okay. But some days everything is dark and difficult and I don’t know how to go about our lives pretending it isn’t. And then you have those days sometimes too, and when we’re both lost I get really worried about finding you again.”

“Abed?”

"I’m so tired, Troy,” he says, and Troy notices for the first time that his knuckles are white, straining with the effort of how tightly he’s clenching his hands together. “It’ll be okay, probably. I’m just tired today.”

Troy blinks, swallowing down his panic. It’s not the time for it.

“Well,” he says softly, reaching out to gently loosen Abed’s fingers, “I’m here today. I can tell you you’re a person.”

He rubs at Abed’s trembling palms, soothing the tension out. Abed looks at him.

“I don’t blame you for any of the things you blame yourself for,” he says, and Troy lets out a sharp sob.

They’re quiet for most of the day.

\---

Troy marches into Sophie’s office the minute she opens the door and walks silently to his seat by the window, planting his feet firmly on the floor and his elbows on his knees. He makes a fist with one hand and covers it with the other.

“I think we should talk,” he says, before she’s even reached her chair.

“Okay,” she says, tucking her legs beneath her in her seat. “Has something happened, Troy?”

“I’ve always been able to deal with stuff that bothers me. Either I talk about it, or I don’t and it gets easier eventually anyway. But this just… it’s not going away. It’s getting worse as Abed gets better, and I--”

He releases his hands from their tight hold, stretching them slowly on an exhale. He studies them for a moment.

“I don’t want to lose him because I can’t get my shit together,” he says.

“I see.” Her full attention is on him. “What is it you aren’t healing from exactly?”

He loses his momentum then, looking at her anxiously when he speaks.

“I haven’t talked about it before. At all, with anyone, not even Abed. When our friends asked what happened Annie had to tell them.”

“Only what you can handle, Troy. As always.”

He nods, and steels himself.

“There was this night,” he says, trying to force a steadier tone than he feels, “Just before the transplant. It was the worst night I think I’ve ever had.”

He’s looking at his hands again, palms up, thumbs rubbing over his heartlines.

“I don’t know why I said ‘I think’. I know it was. I always downplay it when people bring it up, like it wasn’t the most terrified I’ve been in my entire life.”

“That’s not an uncommon coping mechanism,” Sophie says. She’s doing her calmest, most soothing voice, and Troy isn’t mad about it. “Our minds try to undercut the severity of trauma so we can pretend we haven’t been through something awful.”

“That makes sense.” He shakes his head. “I don’t really know how to do this.”

“Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

“Yeah.”

He doesn’t speak.

The clock ticks; not audibly, her desk clock in the corner is digital, but Troy feels the time slip by. It feels like half the session, but when he looks up it’s been two minutes. She lets him take his time, but he realizes time isn’t slowing his thudding heart, isn’t opening his tight throat. He’s going to have to muscle through it, he realizes.

“Sorry,” he says, a bit strangled.

“Would you like something to do with your hands? I have some--”

“No,” he says sharply, before looking at her apologetically, staring wide-eyed at his hands. “Sorry, I- no, I’m, uh. I’m good. Sorry.”

“It’s alright, Troy.” She’s looking at him kindly, and that helps a lot more than the silence did. “You don’t have to talk about this.”

“I’m-- It’s eating me up, but I can’t make myself say it without the walls closing in on me.”

“Why don’t you tell me what it’s about as best you can, no details, and we’ll go from there? One step at a time.”

He nods.

“Okay. Take it at your pace, and stop any time you need to. It’s okay if this takes a while, or multiple sessions. We aren’t trying to push ourselves to the limit today. Remember that you’re safe, and so is Abed and the rest of your family.”

He turns in his chair to part the blinds and look out at Abed, waiting in the car in their usual spot. The clouds are gray and somber outside, casting the front seat into shadow. Troy wants to tell him that he doesn’t have to wait through their sessions if he doesn’t want to, but he can’t work up the nerve to say it - he can’t stand the thought of looking out the window and _not_ seeing Abed there.

“I’m going to want us to have a few minutes at the end of this session to get you back in a better headspace, so if it looks like we’re running out of time I may stop you, okay?” Sophie says once he’s facing her again.

“Okay.”

He takes a few breaths: inhale for five seconds, hold for five, exhale for five, hold for five, repeat. Just like she showed him. She reaches into the drawer of her side table and retrieves a water bottle for him, which she slowly places next to his chair.

“It’s about Abed’s seizure. I’m sure he’s told you about it.”

She nods. It’s a relief, knowing she has a frame of reference already. He cycles his breaths again.

“I was in the shower,” he starts, when he feels a little steadier. “The surgery was scheduled for three weeks away. Annie was with him, I was coming right back.”

She’s not looking at her notebook at all, her pen limp in her hand. She’s looking at him compassionately, nodding along.

“I was just getting dressed, and Annie starts fucking _screaming_. Like, full on someone’s-getting-murdered screams. So I ran into the bedroom, and Abed.”

He stops, as though that’s a complete sentence. He wishes he didn’t have to say any of this out loud, that he could just express it to her through vague hand motions and telepathy.

_Inhale. Hold it. Exhale. Hold it. In._

“I ran over to help, to put something between his head and the headboard, and we were trying to keep him from hurting himself. Annie was timing it. It went on for a really long time. She told me we needed to call an ambulance, and then it just kinda stopped.”

His fingers won’t stay still, no matter what he does, twisting around each other, pinching at the heel of his palm.

“It slowed down really quickly, and then he was really still, and that was _way_ worse than the seizing. I tried to get him to respond, but, uh, he didn’t.”

He doesn’t feel like he’s in the office anymore. He feels like he’s back in his bedroom, touching Abed’s burning cheek, watching his chest for a barely perceptible rise, flinching at the blood in his teeth. His own voice calling _Abed, Abed, hey, wake up buddy_ echoes in the hallway outside the closed office door; he can hear it bouncing off the tile like his sneaker soles.

“I told Annie to run and get the keys. Ambulances take a long time in our neighborhood, driving is faster. She called them to tell them we were coming. We got him in the car, Annie sat in the back with him. I don’t know why I drove. She was just talking to him, and he wasn’t saying anything, and it hit me really suddenly how bad it all was. I remember thinking, ‘great, the love of my life is dying in the back seat and I don’t even get to hold his hand’.”

“That’s a really heavy thought, Troy.”

“Yeah.”

He rubs his hand over his face, ring cold against his cheek. It grounds him a bit, enough to make him realize he’s crying, that his vision is doing a slow zoom out and his head is slowly spinning.

“I think I need to stop,” he says hoarsely.

“Okay. That’s good. I’m glad you know your limits, Troy. Can you drink some water?”

The plastic ridges of the bottlecap are abrasive against his fingertips. The seal snaps with a cracking sensation and a quiet _pop_. The water is surprisingly cold, and he drinks half the bottle in one go.

She guides him through some breathing exercises, a few light sitting stretches, until he feels grounded in his body, and a little more like himself.

“I know Abed feels wrong, too,” he says, eventually. “We both feel off, and in some ways we’re able to, I don’t know... commiserate about it? But then there are moments where it feels like I can’t stand the idea of telling him how scared I am, or why I react certain ways, or I just need to get away from the conversation, and I hate it.”

Troy shakes his head and fiddles with the edge of the label on his water bottle.

“He’s my best friend, we tell each other everything. I don’t want to keep things from him. It makes me feel like I’m someone else.” He peels the label off completely. “It makes me miss him.”

“Have you talked to him about what you’re struggling with?”

“No,” he says guiltily, rubbing at his watery eye with the heel of his palm.

“It’s nothing to feel bad about,” she says. “You’re typically a very open person. It makes sense that something as traumatic as this would make you shut down until you’re ready to process those emotions. It’s a natural response.”

He looks at her, unsure.

“Besides, progress is already happening. You came to me with this, and it’s a huge step for you, Troy. You started talking about it, and now we understand something we didn’t before.”

He nods hesitantly, conceding to her point.

“Even if you can’t talk about something, telling him that you’re struggling to find words is a good step,” she offers. “It tells him that you’re trying. He’ll definitely understand you having difficulty expressing yourself.”

“He accused me of being afraid to go back to our lives, said I’m still living like something could go wrong at any second. Except he said it nothing like that, he was _nice_. He was worried about _me_. It made me so angry.”

“Angry that he was focused on you?”

“Yeah. I was angry that he was right, and he figured it out before me. And I was scared because I don’t know how to stop feeling like I’m waiting for the next hospital trip.”

Troy pulls his cardigan off. He isn’t warm, but he suddenly can’t stand its softness, the comfort of it against his skin. He holds it like a pillow to his chest instead.

“I touch him, and it doesn’t feel real. Like he’s never solid enough. When I think more than a week in the future it feels pointless, like- like him disappearing any day is inevitable. Every time we eat dinner together or have sex or watch _The Last Crusade_ I wonder if it’ll be the last time.”

“Does he know this?”

“He knows I’m clingier now. I haven’t told him why. I’m sure he’s figured it out,” he adds sullenly.

“It’s normal to be afraid of losing him, Troy. Small steps are very important right now. Start by reminding yourself as often as possible that he’s safe and present with you. If you’re comfortable telling him about how you’re feeling, he can help affirm that for you.”

“Okay.” Troy breathes, the weight of what they’ve discussed heavy but settled in his chest. It isn’t waiting in the back of his throat to choke him anymore, it isn’t turning his fists to lead. It sits more quietly within him now that it’s been allowed a voice. He feels hollowed out, exhausted.

“And Troy,” she says, looking at him carefully, “Abed doesn’t know everything. Just because he guesses right sometimes doesn’t mean you don’t need to tell him what’s going on.”

He nods, sniffling. Outside it begins to rain.

\---

Late the next morning, Troy is lying awake when Abed yawns and stretches beside him. He blinks his eyes open and looks at Troy, surprised to see him already looking back.

“You didn’t leave,” Abed says, sitting up to glance at the bedside clock. “You’re normally up by now.”

“I don’t want to be a person today,” Troy says, curling tighter into himself, voice muffled by the comforter. Abed’s expression softens from confusion to concern.

“Okay,” he says, after a moment, and lies back down, pulling Troy close.

\---

They don’t use their backyard terribly often. It’s smallish, by LA standards - really, their whole house is extremely modest for the money they have - and they’ve never minded because they don’t need it for much. They like to sit out there on summer evenings sometimes, and they eat outside when the group comes to visit. When Abed has just released a project and they have to double down on privacy, he runs several laps instead of his standard two miles. Otherwise it’s a quiet and relatively underutilized area of their home, walled in by a dark wood fence and a palm tree or two.

So when Troy is browsing the aisle at the hardware store in March, looking for an o-ring for the kitchen faucet, he doesn’t expect his eye to catch on the end cap of the aisle.

Abed looks up from two shoulder-height aisles away, pausing with a ramset in his hands when he notices Troy has stopped and bent down to inspect the display. He sets down the tool and walks over.

The end of the aisle is full of seed packets, colorful labels advertising a rainbow of vegetables, herbs, fruits, flowers. Troy is looking at the section titled Native to California, and he’s trying not to look like he cares about this because he isn’t sure why he suddenly does.

Abed doesn’t seem to mind, though, when Troy risks a quick glance. He seems pleased by the display, and Troy thinks in passing that he probably likes the color coordination. Troy returns his attention to the natives section, charmed by a little yellow flower called a _California Suncup_.

“Nice colors,” Abed says, and Troy’s heart flutters in a lighter way than he expects. He looks at Abed again, smiling, to his own surprise, a little breathlessly. Abed smiles comfortably back at him, blinking a couple of times, and takes his hand loosely before turning back to inspect the packets.

“' _Scarlet Bugler’_ sounds like a DC villain,” Abed comments, and Troy snorts.

“Yeah, and maybe this is his secret identity,” he replies, lifting one of the crinkly paper envelopes exhibiting small violet blooms. “' _Danny’s Skullcap’_. Who the hell is Danny?”

Abed chuckles. It sounds like he’s going to respond, but then he pauses, grabbing a different packet with his free hand and holding it out in front of them.

_Blue Dicks,_ the label reads.

Troy can’t keep himself from chortling like a teenager, and Abed snickers next to him too. The young woman in the next aisle sorting merchandise looks at them, unimpressed. Troy tries to school his expression into something serious, but when he looks back and sees Abed, eyes sparkling with amusement, he doesn’t care so much about sour employees.

Troy remembers walking in here with the same raw, open-heart feeling he’s carried for months, but for a moment it eases.

“Do you want some of these?” Abed asks him softly, replacing the ridiculous packet as he picks up on the shifting tone. Troy leans a little further into the brush of his shoulder.

“I don’t know,” Troy says, even though the answer is yes. “I’ve never really grown anything.”

“We had an A plus yam in college,” Abed reasons. “Besides, I think the plant does most of the hard work. What’s the worst that can happen?”

“It might be nice,” Troy admits. He picks up a variety of blackberry bush, glances at the tiny print on the back label. “I do kind of miss these from home.”

Troy doesn’t expect it, but suddenly Abed is pressing a kiss to his temple, and _rubus ursinus_ trembles in Troy’s hand.

They pick out a few of their favorites and head to the register. When they get there, Troy places the packets carefully on the counter, smiling politely at the irritable young woman from the aisles.

Abed slides an envelope of _Blue Dicks_ across the counter to join the others, and Troy breaks all over again, his giggle gleeful but brief; he cuts himself off quickly by clearing his throat, struggling to contain his amusement. Abed is suffering a similar fate, squeezing Troy’s hand desperately.

“Don’t you have, like, an Oscar or something?” the cashier asks him dourly.

\---

“He’s dealing way better than me,” Troy says one day, towards the end of a session, lifting one of the wooden slats of the blinds and glancing through. He can see Abed in the car, feet on the dash, reading a script with a highlighter held between his teeth.

“How do you mean?”

“He’s really quiet, and he does have bad days, but he doesn’t seem to be panicking like I am anymore. He tries to make me laugh a lot. He sleeps better than I do, he eats easier.” Troy pauses. “Though not as much as I’d like him to,” he mumbles.

“Why do you think that is?”

“Well, he’s been coming here longer, I guess. I don’t know.” Troy fidgets with the pocket of his sweater. He’s taken to wearing them most sessions for comfort. “He’s always been more comfortable with death than me. He’s stronger than me, I think.”

“I want you to keep in mind that you and Abed had very different experiences in this, Troy,” she says kindly. “You dealt with the same issue, but from very opposite ends. It’s difficult to compare that.”

“That makes sense,” Troy says, even though he doesn’t feel sure of it.

“You said you’ve dealt with death together before?”

“I mean, kind of. Not always together. We had a classmate die- well, fake his death, and I didn’t like to think about it. Before that I found Pierce’s mom dead in the garage, and my cousin died, and my uncle before that, and every time it was just this- this big looming feeling that I couldn’t stand to look at.”

“And then you had to.”

“And then I had to.” Troy sighs. “You know, I’ve always known Abed is there. Even when we almost split up in college, and when I was on the trip, I at least knew he would still exist, you know? I knew he was out there somewhere.”

Troy stops short. It’s hard to breathe for a moment; he shakes his head and soldiers on.

“I always knew I would see him again, and it was temporary. I’ve never had to face the idea of living in the world and not having Abed in it. And it wasn’t just facing that, but the everyday uncertainty of whether he would still be there in the morning too.”

“That’s a harsh band-aid to rip off.”

“Yeah. I know it’s not the same for him, too. He, uh… he had it a little harder in the beginning. I wasn’t clear enough with him when I left and he didn’t know if I was coming back. He’s dealt with lots of people leaving.”

“But you haven’t.”

“Not the same way. It was really new for me and it hit me really hard.”

“That’s just another reason this isn’t about strength or weakness, Troy. Your different life experiences mean you’re going to process this very differently. There are things he’s more equipped to deal with and things you are. Give yourself some grace in this.”

“I guess that’s fair,” he says, considering. The clock tells him they have two minutes left.

“Oh my god!” he says suddenly, eyes growing wide. “Pierce died too! How do I keep forgetting him?”

\---

“You don’t have to wait here if you don’t want to, Abed,” Troy says as he gets in the car.

“You always wait for me,” Abed says simply. He goes back to his puzzle, like it’s the most natural thing in the world to care so deeply.

\---

Troy is on the living room sofa, watching a YouTube video of his dance studio’s recent show. He’s pausing and rewinding a lot, watching his friends’ progress, wondering which spots he’d have been in if he’d been able to attend classes. (If he’d been able to stomach leaving the house.)

The front door swings open quickly and doesn’t close.

“Troy,” Abed says excitedly, and Troy twists to look at him, poised and ready for an emergency.

“Everything’s fine. Come here!”

It’s mid-morning in April, so the grass is cool under Troy’s bare feet and the breeze is a touch brisk. Abed leads him to the backyard, to the little flower bed Troy had carefully planted weeks ago.

“Look,” Abed says, touching his elbow and pointing.

There is an uneven row of tiny green sprouts poking out of the upturned soil. Troy gasps softly.

“I guess I didn’t really expect them to grow,” he says, dropping onto his knees to inspect them more closely. Each sprout has a cluster of two to three vibrant blades springing from the tilled earth.

There are more packets sitting on top of his tool chest in the garage, where they’ve been since last month. He had gotten through planting the peonies and primroses before his hands began to shake and his eyes began to blur, and he had gone inside, dropped his gloves and the remaining seeds, and laid on his face on the couch for an hour, breathing deeply and trying not to think. He hasn’t checked on them since, but now, seeing them grow despite his neglect, something sparks in him.

“Maybe I should plant the others,” he says, glancing at Abed where he’s squatting beside him. “Do you think it’s too late in the season?”

“I think they’ve got time,” Abed says, and smiles.

\---

“I want you to consider something for me, Troy,” Sophie says, stretching her left leg in front of her like a cat. She hums in satisfaction and tucks her foot underneath her other knee.

“Okay.”

“You’ve said in more than one session that Abed has a lot of trauma he’s dealt with, and that you don’t. Do you think your own experiences don’t count?”

“I mean, they count, I guess. I just- I mean.”

She waits for him to get his thoughts in order. The late afternoon sunlight glints on the gold clip of her pen.

“He’s had all this shit, you know? He was bullied in school. He dealt with a lot of racism, especially after 9/11. His mom left.”

“You were closeted in school due to peer pressure, you dealt with racism too, and your parents divorced.”

“Okay, but-- well. He got held against his will twice during his college years.”

“True, but so did you. AC Repair School and pirates, if I remember correctly.”

“He dealt with me leaving him,” Troy says, quieter. “I was coming back, but he didn’t know that.”

“Troy,” she says, ever-so-gently. “Isn’t that same feeling what you’ve just been through? Isn’t that why you’re here?”

He swallows.

“I thought you said it was bad to compare our experiences. What’s your point?”

“My point is that you’re too hard on yourself. You write off your own pain in order to keep holding his up. We’ve talked before about denial. It’s a perfectly useful tool when it’s applied well, and it can save us a lot of grief, but it’s important that it’s utilized properly. Writing your own problems off as inconsequential doesn’t make the hardship go away, it just puts guilt on yourself for the way you feel.”

“Huh.” He lets this sink in for a moment. She rips a page out of her notebook and begins to fold it while she waits. “That makes sense, I guess, but I really was happy before all this.”

“I don’t doubt that you were,” she says, digging her thumb into the paper to secure the crease.

It calms him when she does things with her hands while they talk, makes him feel less studied. She picked up on this very quickly and now makes it a point to do so.

“I’m not trying to tell you that you should feel worse than you do, Troy. Sometimes what traumatizes one brain doesn’t do much to another. For all that you mentioned Abed has been through, he was happy before, too.” She holds up a somewhat crooked paper airplane to the light of the window, then sets it back on the surface of her notebook for adjustments. “You do show a good deal of emotion when you talk about your past, but it’s up to you to decide what the hard times were. I trust your instincts about yourself.”

“But?”

“But.” She stills her hands and looks at him. “Don’t do yourself, or your marriage, the disservice of believing that what you went through in August was nothing. If you discount the trauma of the experience, then you leave no one to blame for the repercussions but yourself, and then you’re inviting guilt you don’t deserve into your life.”

Troy is silent for a moment, squinting open-mouthed at the far wall.

“I think you just unwrinkled my brain,” he says. Sophie laughs.

\---

Troy isn’t sure when exactly it happened, but their house looks like a different place.

The front porch is framed by soon-to-bloom flower beds and two tall, beautiful birds of paradise that Abed helped him plant last week. There’s a banana tree in the side yard, baby majesty palms to frame it, and Troy even spruced up the pathway to the backyard, where the most dramatic changes have taken place.

The day Abed pulled Troy outside to point out the tiny beginning shoots, something shifted sideways to make room in Troy’s heart. Planting them had felt useless, futile, and he nearly expected them to sit stagnant in the dirt, too scared to move from the safety of the ground. But they didn’t, and hope became a little less terrifying, and Troy was reminded that his hands are good at fixing things.

They had gone inside, laid out the seeds that were left, and planned for hours. By the time it grew dark outside, Troy looked over their messy drawings and then up to Abed.

“If we actually do this, we may not have room for you to run back there when you want to,” Troy had said.

“I’ll figure something out,” Abed had replied, and smiled.

Today, the dark fence is lined with transplanted rose bushes along the sides, yellow and purple on the left side, white and red on the right. The back wall will be blackberries - Troy wants to grow those from seed himself - and the surrounding beds stretch a winding border around the bushes, bright with native flowers and herbs in varying stages of growth. The suncups were the first to bloom, yellow petals reaching delicately but boldly towards the sky. Troy might love them the most.

“Troy,” Abed calls now, and Troy comes into the hall just in time to see him pushing the front door closed with his foot. In his arms is a large, leafy monstera, dark green leaves reaching out in every direction. The pot looks heavy, propped on Abed’s hip, and he tries to take a step further inside but he’s off balance from closing the door; his shoulder thuds into the wall with a sickening pop, and he winces but covers it quickly.

“Babe,” Troy says, concerned, rushing to take it from his hands. They lower it to the floor together. “Are you alright?”

“I’m okay,” Abed says, rolling his shoulder out with a small hiss. He shakes his arm out and schools his face into something more normal, but Troy can see the traces of pain in the tightening of his jaw, in the creases of his eyes.

Still. He carried this in from the car, and that’s more than he’s lifted on his own in a while. It’s probably a good sign, Troy tells himself. His anxiety twists in his chest.

“Ari has one of these in his office at the studio,” Abed explains, when he’s taken a moment to recover. He gestures to the plant on the floor beside them. “I thought you might like it, so I went and found one for you.”

“Oh.”

Troy isn’t sure why he’s suddenly struck with a wave of heart-melting affection, but it blindsides him. He has to remind himself to breathe.

“Thank you,” he says, awed.

“You’re doing your Troy Face,” Abed points out, surprised. Troy realizes he’s right: all of his love and longing are written plainly on his face, in an expression Abed affectionately calls his truest form, the point at which he is his most earnest and authentic.

“Yeah,” Troy says, smiling. He’s surprised to find that he really means it, doesn’t think he could stop if he wanted to.

“You haven’t looked like that in a long time,” Abed says softly, like he’s afraid to break the spell. “I take it that means you like it.”

“I like you,” Troy says, almost a little giddy. He feels strange - the weight he’s carried for months is still there, present always, but he’s learning to breathe around it, he realizes. “It’s beautiful. We’ll find a spot for it.”

There’s a moment that draws out between them, as Troy adjusts to the idea of letting himself be happy, and Abed watches him, hopeful but unsure. Troy breaks it by leaning in and kissing Abed softly, squeezing his good arm lightly, touching his cheek with careful fingers. It’s warm and comfortable and a little dizzying, certain in a way that’s felt too risky until now. Abed wraps an arm loosely around Troy’s lower back, and when Troy pulls away, Abed kisses the corner of his mouth, then his cheekbone, his temple.

“Let’s go look at this,” Troy says, hushed, gesturing to Abed’s hunched shoulder.

Abed nods, stepping out of the moment and into the house, but he takes Troy’s hand along the way.

\---

“You can do this.”

Abed’s voice is low and calm, and he gives Troy a small but significant smile from the driver’s seat. Troy bounces his leg nervously on the dashboard and chews on the string of his hoodie.

“Maybe I should try next week,” he says weakly, knowing it’s a copout.

“Hey.” Abed raises his eyebrows and looks at Troy seriously. “I’ll be out here until you’re done. Thirty feet away.”

Troy breathes in deeply and lets out a little _woo!_ to psych himself up. Abed nods and adds a small, encouraging _yeah!_ as Troy grabs his bag from the floor and opens the door, sliding out into the parking lot. He glances back at Abed, giving him a thumbs up, and hoists his bag over his shoulder before returning the gesture and shutting the car door.

“Troy!”

He turns to see his friend Jules hopping out of her own car a couple of spaces away. She runs over to hug him, and he nearly drops his dance bag but he accepts it anyway. She pulls away excitedly.

“We’ve missed you so much!” she says, walking with him to the studio doors. “How’s everything?”

“Oh, you know,” he says, a little awkwardly, and then they’re inside the studio, his flats squeaking on the marley, and he sees his reflection in the wall of mirrors opposite and it hits him how much he’s missed it here.

“I’m glad to be back,” he says, smiling tentatively at her. She beams.

“Hey, Sarah!” she calls over his shoulder. “Look who’s back!”

\---

“Am I ever gonna feel normal again?” Troy asks one day, playing with a fidget puzzle.

“I don’t have a straight answer,” Sophie says, squishing putty between her fingers. “You might. It might come and go. There are some changes in your life that are permanent. I think a better question is, what would normal look like for you now?”

“Huh,” Troy says, and solves the puzzle.

\---

"I think I might have to hold your hand a little tighter for the rest of our lives," Troy says over breakfast one morning, and it's important to him that Abed understands - there are some things he'll never be able to let go of, and some things that will never return to exactly as they were, but they can be something close if Abed can accept that they have changed. It'll be in the little things, mostly, the way Troy still prefers to drive and checks that Abed's taken his meds one too many times each night and lets go a little slower in the mornings.

Troy doesn't know how to say all this, so he has to hope Abed understands from his impassioned plea over matching bowls of Lucky Charms.

"I think I might have to let you," Abed says seriously, and touches Troy's wrist with a smile.

\---

"Things are getting better, I think," Troy says, one early afternoon in late May.

"That's good!" Sophie replies with a smile. "Tell me about that."

"I mean, it isn't _that_ different." Troy examines his nails, but his hands remain still in his lap. "It's still all there. It's heavy when I think about it. I still get uneasy when he's gone for too long."

"But?"

"But." He gestures vaguely, not sure what he means by it. "There are more good moments. It's starting to feel like we can figure out how to be us again. It's less… I can see the way out, now."

"Going from _recovery_ to _recovered_ isn't supposed to be dramatic. There's not really going to be a moment where someone says the perfect thing at the perfect time and heals you on the spot." Sophie folds her hands together.

"But?" he asks, hopefully.

She laughs.

"But," she says, looking over the rim of her glasses, "It isn't uncommon to have a realization of progress. A lot of clients have described moments to me where they're just going about their day, existing, and notice in the process that things have gotten easier to carry than they were before. It's less about having reached the end of your journey and more about knowing you're better prepared for it."

"I don't know that we're quite there yet," Troy says, but he offers her a small smile. "I think it's possible, though."

"That in itself is progress," she says, and grins.

\---

When Troy wakes, Abed is holding him close, his chest pressed to Troy’s back. His hold isn’t tense, it’s comfortable, easy; Abed’s breaths are steady and slow, and Troy smiles a little, allowing himself to drift off for a few minutes more. It’s not a full dream he slips into, more a series of drowsy feelings: a warmth in his gut, like the first moment he looked around at the study group and thought, _these guys are mine now, I guess_ ; the disbelief and the elation when Abed pulled him by the wrist into a kiss, standing on a sun-beaten dock on the coastline; the champagne-bubble feeling in his chest on their wedding day because they were side by side the whole time, taking it on like any other adventure - excited, courageous, silly, together.

Troy took Abed to Greece after they were married. It was his favorite place he visited on his trip, and he wanted to show Abed the beaches, the olive groves, the sanctuaries of Delphi they studied together in college. His mind fills in the gap between those places with the mornings, the nights, even one insatiable afternoon, Abed’s hands on him and in him, his voice in Troy’s ear, his skin tasting of sea salt and sweat.

Troy wakes slowly this time, his pulse beating pleasantly southward.

It was a nice dream, but Troy is too comfortable to move; at least, until he stretches, and his body shifts backwards the tiniest bit, and he notices Abed is hard too. Troy blinks, considering, and then pushes his hips back into the pressure; Abed gasps sleepily in Troy’s ear, and Troy surmises that he was half asleep until now.

He’s awake now though, his arm once loosely slung over Troy’s waist now dipping beneath the soft cotton of his t-shirt, tracing lightly up Troy’s abdomen, fingertips ghosting across his breast, thumb rolling circles around his nipple. Abed noses behind Troy’s ear and mouths at the base of his neck, and Troy hums, reaching a hand back to trace down the side of Abed’s thigh.

When Abed’s hand trails back down and slips beneath the waistband of Troy’s sweatpants, Troy’s breath catches - it turns into a low moan when Abed’s sleep-warm hand wraps around him firmly, working him slowly. Troy’s hand moves to grab Abed’s thigh and press him closer, prompting Abed to roll his hips against Troy’s ass with a breathy sigh.

“What do you want?” Abed asks, rocking against him in time with his strokes, tugging at Troy’s earlobe with his teeth.

“Fuck me,” Troy says, and Abed buries his face in Troy’s shoulder and moans.

Abed presses a kiss to the junction of his shoulder and neck and then pulls his hand from Troy’s pants, rolling onto his back. Troy thinks about moving, considers repositioning and getting rid of his clothes, but he realizes he’s more calm and relaxed from sleep right now than he’s been in longer than he can remember, and he doesn’t want to break the spell; he stays right where he is, listens to Abed shuffling sleepily in the bedside drawer, and breathes a sigh of relief when Abed’s chest presses against him once more.

Abed’s hand rests heavily on Troy’s hip, and Troy expects to have to explain himself, to ask if they can just lie like this - but Abed doesn’t move him, just glides his hand up and down Troy’s side appreciatively, caresses the dip of his waist, squeezes the curve of his ass. Troy smiles to himself, wondering why he ever thought Abed would want him any other way than he’s comfortable.

There’s the standard popping cap sound, and then Abed’s hand is back under his boxers, a long finger pressing inside him. Troy loves Abed’s fingers, loves how beautiful they are and how well they know him. They know exactly where to move, how to stretch, when to rub all the right spots in him to draw out his moans, to turn them into whines. Troy reaches behind his head, fumbling for a moment until he finds the back of Abed’s head, and then tangles his fingers in Abed’s hair, longer than he used to keep it and impossibly soft. Abed bites at the base of Troy’s neck, soothing with his tongue, and Troy hasn’t seen it yet but he knows the mark will be dark and perfect like they always are.

“I love you like this.” Abed massages three fingertips across his most sensitive bundle of nerves, and Troy’s toes curl.

“Abed,” he gasps raggedly, rocking back against his hand, and it’s all he needs to say. Abed kisses the back of his neck and pulls his fingers out, and there’s a small shift behind Troy as Abed yanks his pajama pants down just enough to free himself, then Troy’s. Another slick sound as Abed lubes himself up, and Troy is so impatient that he almost considers moving and bursting his own comfortable bubble just so he can straddle Abed, end the suspense--

Abed seats himself inside Troy slowly and in one long thrust, and they both speak at the same time.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Abed hisses, forehead dropping onto Troy’s shoulder.

“Oh, my god,” Troy agrees, reaching for Abed’s hand.

It’s a little sticky from the lube, but Troy doesn’t care. He tangles their fingers together and holds their hands close to his chest, pressing a kiss to Abed’s knuckles. Abed leans up to kiss his cheek and begins to move, slowly, unhurriedly, his thrusts deliberate and deep.

Troy’s comfort has become a pleasurable haze. He feels no urgency, no rush to reach the end; he’s happy to stay here as long as Abed wants, to feel Abed’s arm wrapped around him, the bridge of his nose buried in the crook of Troy’s neck, his deep sighs ghosting across Troy’s shoulder blades.

Eventually - he couldn’t say how long, but the sun has shifted a bit behind the blinds, and Troy’s breaths are punctuated with little sounds and whimpers - Abed moves their joined hands down to take Troy’s cock between them, guiding them together to a soft, well-timed pattern.

“ _Abed_ ,” he sighs.

“I love you,” Abed says, and thumbs over the head of Troy’s cock.

It overtakes him then, an intense but gentle tide, and he’s spilling into their hands and leaning back against Abed’s chest. Abed works him through it, kissing every inch of skin he can reach, and Troy thinks maybe he says something else, because he can feel the hum of Abed’s voice against his back, but he doesn’t catch the words. He closes his eyes and lets himself go in it.

When he comes down, Abed is close. He’s trembling with the effort to keep still, propped on one elbow so he can see Troy’s face.

“Are you alright?” he asks, and Troy realizes he’s shaking a little too.

“Come on, baby,” he says instead, pulling Abed’s face down to kiss him. Abed moans into Troy’s mouth with a touch of desperation and thrusts once, twice more. He breaks away from the kiss to gasp as he comes, slumping against Troy, chin hooked over his shoulder. Troy cards through his messy hair, murmurs _yes, there you go, so good_ until Abed’s breaths even out.

“I love you too,” Troy says, and Abed lifts his head to meet his eyes, looking at Troy with an impossibly soft smile. Troy is willing to bet it matches his own. Abed leans in to kiss him properly, and for a few moments there’s nothing but their lips moving together and the warmth of the golden June morning.

When Abed does pull out, he cleans Troy with care, re-situates his pajamas, and Troy thinks that if there’s a time to break through the beautiful fog he’s been in, it would be now; he rolls onto his other side to wrap around Abed’s chest, bury his face between Abed’s cheek and the warm pillow.

The bubble doesn’t burst.

Troy blinks, as much as he can with his face so squished, and realizes that the honey-colored light has crept into his chest and made a home there. He feels safe, and Abed feels solid in his arms, and Troy thinks he might have started crying because suddenly Abed is pulling back to look at him, concerned.

“Troy?”

“I missed you,” Troy sobs, and Abed’s face softens. “And I think I missed me too.”

“We’re both here,” Abed says, taking Troy’s cheek in his hand.

“Yeah,” Troy says. “We are.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @nadir-barnes.


End file.
